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What If We Achieved Real Equality for Women?

In 1970, women marched in Washington, D.C. to celebrate 50 years since the signing of the 19th Amendment. Forty-five years later, how far have women really come when it comes to enjoying equal treatment? (Photo: Archive/Wikimedia)

This week marks 95 years since the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, and 44 years since Congress designated its anniversary Women’s Equality Day. This gives us the opportunity to consider how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, and envision what the world would look like if women attained full equality. I will leave a discussion of political equality to my colleagues working tirelessly in that mission, and focus on the economy.

To achieve this, lawmakers must enact policies to combat overt discrimination such as the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. But that’s not enough. We must also uproot the structural factors that prevent women from pursuing and attaining the same career opportunities as men.

At the same time, while it is entirely legitimate (and quite important) to ask why there aren’t more female executives at the nation’s largest companies and partners at top law firms, women’s equality also demands that we work for a world where the jobs that employ a majority of women are no longer so poorly paid.

It is unacceptable that early childhood teachers—increasingly recognized as critical to children’s development—still earn wages too low to live on, and see little or no increase in wages when they have greater educational attainment. Similarly, it’s intolerable that minimum wage and overtime pay standards that apply to other employees still have not been extended to home care workers, a workforce overwhelmingly made up of women of color. Strategies that target poor conditions in these and other disproportionately female occupations are needed, as are those that increase women’s opportunities in higher-paid, male-dominated jobs.

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Further

On this day 50 years ago, a platoon of U.S. soldiers entered the hamlet of My Lai in South Vietnam and, in hours, massacred 504 unarmed women, children and old men. Over 300 of the victims were younger than 12; the G.I.s also raped many of the women and burned all the homes. Today, with torturers and warmongers on the rise, the horrors of My Lai serve as a grim warning. In America's wars of choice, says one vet, we are all "one step away from My Lai."